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With love and passion, everyone can have a nice garden...Elaine YimCount Your Blessings!Count The Garden By The Flowers, Never By The Leaves That Fall.Count Your Life With Smiles And Not The Tears That Roll...... Author unknown.

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Malaysian Flora USDA Zone 11

Welcome to our exotic world of everlasting summers and tropical rainforests!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Spanish Needles Bidens pilosa for Wildflower Wednesday

At the rooftop Secret Garden of 1-Utama, there is a planter box filled to the brim with flowers that looked like wild daisies. These Bidens pilosa flowers attracted many bees and butterflies, the beneficial insects.

At first I thought they were the more beautiful and bigger version of Tridax procumbens, a weed which we can find everywhere by the roadsides in Malaysia.

“Spanish Needles Bidens pilosa for Wildflower Wednesday”, a copyrighted post, was written for My Nice Garden blog by Autumn Belle @ http://www.mynicegarden.com/ on June 23rd, 2011.

﻿Scientific name: Bidens pilosa

Family: Asteraceae
Origin: Tropical America

Category: Annual

Photographs taken at: The Rooftop Secret Garden of 1-Utama

This plant has many common names, even within the same culture.

English: Black Jack, Spanish Needle

Malay: Ketul

Chinese: 鬼针草 ('gui zhen cao' meaning ghost needle grass)

Taiwanese: 咸豐草 (xian feng cao where xianfeng is the name of a county in China)

Philipines: Pisau-pisau.

This is an annual plant that can grow to 1m tall. It is considered a weed in some tropical countries in Africa, Asia and Tropical America) while in other countries it is used as a food and medicinal source. In sub-Saharan Africa, the tender shoots and young leaves are used fresh or dried as a leaf vegetable to be stored for use in times of scarcity.

The plant is used in traditional chinese medicine under the name of xian feng cao (咸豐草).

The small yellow and white flowers are produced individually. Each flower has between 4-5 petals.
The seeds are black and contain 4-5 black burrs which cling to humans and animals.

Such a small and simple flower but it is an important food source for our little friends.

﻿Can you see the pretty white heart-shaped petals?

Information from: Wikipedia.

This is my entry for Wildflower Wednesday hosted by Clay and Limestone every fourth Wednesday of the month, the link here.

This is also my entry for Fertilizer Friday hosted by Glenda at Tootsie Time here.

8 comments:

We have this growing around our property and consider it a weed, although it is a native plant to the area we live in. The bees and butterflies do enjoy it. The needles stick to your clothing then drop off somewhere else to grow another plant. :-)

Autumn Belle, The Bidens Pilosa must be a great medicine as you write about in your posting today. The bees seem to know it. They must love that plant as seen by their many workers on them. Yes, what one person calls a weed may be a flower to another. As they say, " a flower in the wrong place is often called a weed by others". It is all in your point of view! Jack

those photos are incredible!!! You did a great job capturing that guy hard at work! He is lucky to have the chance to "work" on such a pretty flower!Thanks for linking in this week...I love seeing your gardens!!!

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